MALAYSIA POLICE HUNT NORTH KOREAN ASSASSINS
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian authorities hunted the killers the North Korean leader’s half brother Wednesday as they tried to unravel the Cold War-style assassination which the South said was carried out by two female agents. Pathologists in Kuala Lumpur were examining the body of Kim Jong-Nam for clues to how he died, as South Korea’s spy chief told lawmakers he “strongly suspected” he had been poisoned. CCTV images from the airport that emerged in Malaysian media of one of the suspects showed an Asian woman wearing a white top with the letters “LOL” emblazoned on the front. If proved, the killing would be the highest-profile death on young leader Kim Jong-Un’s watch since the 2013 execution of his uncle, Jang Song-Thaek, in a country with a long record of meting out brutal deaths. South Korea’s spy chief Lee Byung-Ho said the two women struck on Monday morning as Kim was readying to board a flight to Macau where he has spent many years in exile.
WWII SHIPWRECKS OFF MALAYSIA BROKEN FOR SCRAP—DIVERS
KUALA LUMPUR: Three World War II shipwrecks off the coast of Malaysia—the final resting place of dozens of seamen—have almost disappeared, local divers say, with the finger pointing at possible scrap metal scavengers.The Japanese cargo vessels, which went down with their crews off the coast of Sabah in 1944, had become popular dive sites, teeming with fish and coral. But local operators say the wrecks have been reduced to rumps, stripped of valuable metals that they believe are being sold on for profit. Mark Hedger, owner of a diving center in Sabah and a frequent visitor to the sites, told AFP they had now almost disappeared. There are scores of WWII shipwrecks littered throughout Southeast Asia, the result of fierce naval battles between Japanese and Allied forces. The wrecks, some of which have never been properly documented, are treated as war graves because the bodies of the crews were never recovered. Sabah scuba diver Monica Chin said: “We need to know who did this and must bring them to justice. All of us are concerned and we suspect that someone is stealing the parts for scrap metal.”“We have to conserve our history. It is really very sad,” she added.